To blow the whistle, you need to have been close to the action. In the case of the Uber Files, the person sharing details about Uber’s practices was actually involved in the action.

Mark MacGann revealed himself as the Uber Files whistleblower yesterday in a video published by The Guardian. MacGann was Uber’s head of public policy in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and he’s now the founder of Moonshot Ventures. He’s also directly tied to the files being published.

• “I am partly responsible,” MacGann told the Guardian.
• MacGann texted Emmanuel Macron in 2015 for help when a French police official banned one of the company’s services. “I will look at this personally,” Macron texted him.
• It’s unusual, but not surprising, for MacGann to implicate himself. It had to be someone close to the company that had access to those emails and texts, but past whistleblowers have tended to be people who observed dicey business practices, not the ones involved with them.

So will MacGann face consequences? It’s too early to say how these reports on Uber will affect the company and those people named in the files.

• One thing we do know: The Uber Files implicated some huge names, with Joe Biden, Emmanuel Macron and George Osborne among them.
• Nat and I put together a guide of everyone who has been named so far.

Authorities certainly want more tech whistleblowers, and it will be interesting to see if MacGann’s experience prompts other frontline tech workers to come forward.

• In December, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau called on tech workers to speak out when they see wrongdoing and outlined protections for those who do.
• EU leaders said they’ll lean on whistleblowers to help enforce major new tech rules. “There will be more and more people in the world and also gatekeepers who will say, ‘Hey listen, why don’t we make these markets better and fairer?’” one lawmaker said.

MacGann could of course get dragged through the mud with these reports. But he’s also undoubtedly closer to the action than some whistleblowers, which comes with potentially having more to share about how things went down. If he comes out unscathed, he may prompt other people who were involved in some of tech’s darker dealings to come forward too.

—Sarah Roach